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The shadow libraries such as Anna's Archive are a treasure trove of old books, and you're not breaking any imaginary law by downloading old books which are out

The shadow libraries such as Anna's Archive are a treasure trove of old books, and you're not breaking any imaginary law by downloading old books which are out of copyright.

zozbot234 2y ago
If a book is out of copyright you can usually find the scan on Internet Archive. No need to look elsewhere at all.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  The internet archive's open library will also link to Standard Ebooks (and Gutenberg and a few others) if a version exists of a book you are looking at e.g.: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL37044523M/The_Woodlanders https://openlibrary.org/books/OL37044523M/The_Woodlanders
- notpushkin 2y ago
  If a book is still in copyright, chances are you’ll find it there as well. Scans suck though, even a badly OCR’ed EPUB is way better.
charcircuit 2y ago
The scans can have a different copyright date than the book itself.
- eesmith 2y ago
  There is no copyright on scans. Scanning is not transformative and does not result in a derivative work which can is protected by copyright law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Scanning_an_image_does_not_make_it_your_%22own_work%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Scanning_an_image_do... https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/1214/who-owns-a-copyright-on-a-scanned-work https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/1214/who-owns-a-copy... points us to read the Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices at https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/docs/compendium.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/docs/compendium.pdf > 313.4(A) Mere Copies > A work that is a mere copy of another work of authorship is not copyrightable. The Office cannot register a work that has been merely copied from another work of authorship without any additional original authorship. See L. Batlin & Son, 536 F.2d at 490 (“one who has slavishly or mechanically copied from others may not claim to be an author”); Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191, 195 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) (“exact photographic copies of public domain works of art would not be copyrightable under United States law because they are not original”).
  - charcircuit 2y ago
    A pdf file can contain more than just the raw images of the pages.
    - eesmith 2y ago
      Certainly! If you add my latest Kirk/Spock slash fanfic to the end of the text, then that is transformative, so the resulting PDF is covered under copyright. But you wrote "scan". Adding an OCR'ed text layer, or doing manual proofreading and layout ("sweat of the brow") is not sufficiently transformative to have copyright protection. And we were specifically talking about scans of old books stored in shadow libraries.

The shadow libraries such as Anna's Archive are a treasure trove of old books, and you're not breaking any imaginary law by downloading old books which are out of copyright.

zozbot234 2y ago

If a book is out of copyright you can usually find the scan on Internet Archive. No need to look elsewhere at all.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago
The internet archive's open library will also link to Standard Ebooks (and Gutenberg and a few others) if a version exists of a book you are looking at e.g.: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL37044523M/The_Woodlanders https://openlibrary.org/books/OL37044523M/The_Woodlanders
notpushkin 2y ago
If a book is still in copyright, chances are you’ll find it there as well. Scans suck though, even a badly OCR’ed EPUB is way better.

charcircuit 2y ago

The scans can have a different copyright date than the book itself.

eesmith 2y ago
There is no copyright on scans. Scanning is not transformative and does not result in a derivative work which can is protected by copyright law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Scanning_an_image_does_not_make_it_your_%22own_work%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Scanning_an_image_do... https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/1214/who-owns-a-copyright-on-a-scanned-work https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/1214/who-owns-a-copy... points us to read the Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices at https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/docs/compendium.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/docs/compendium.pdf > 313.4(A) Mere Copies > A work that is a mere copy of another work of authorship is not copyrightable. The Office cannot register a work that has been merely copied from another work of authorship without any additional original authorship. See L. Batlin & Son, 536 F.2d at 490 (“one who has slavishly or mechanically copied from others may not claim to be an author”); Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191, 195 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) (“exact photographic copies of public domain works of art would not be copyrightable under United States law because they are not original”).
- charcircuit 2y ago
  A pdf file can contain more than just the raw images of the pages.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    Certainly! If you add my latest Kirk/Spock slash fanfic to the end of the text, then that is transformative, so the resulting PDF is covered under copyright. But you wrote "scan". Adding an OCR'ed text layer, or doing manual proofreading and layout ("sweat of the brow") is not sufficiently transformative to have copyright protection. And we were specifically talking about scans of old books stored in shadow libraries.